10 Star Trek Episodes That Could Be Made Into Movies That Would Satisfy Old And New Trekkies Alike

Star Trek is now a blockbuster action movie franchise. It just is. There’s no going back after the success of the bombastic Star Trek Into Darkness. Frequent explosions and gravity-defying action scenes are what the average viewer expects of the franchise now. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against action — action has always been a part of the Star Trek formula. Note I said a part of the formula.

But wait — would it be possible for future Trek movies to provide both big action and the more intelligent, character-driven stuff the series was once known for? Could both new and old school Trekkies walk out of a new Star Trek movie feeling totally satisfied? I think it could happen if the makers of the next movie look toward these 10 Trek episodes for inspiration…

Note – I only chose Original Series and Next Generation episodes for this list. I love Deep Space Nine, but it’s such a departure from the standard Trek formula that it would almost impossible to turn its best episodes into movies. As for Voyager and Enterprise, well, I don’t think I need to explain why they didn’t make the list, do I?

Charlie X

The crew of the Enterprise find a teenager who has been stranded alone on an abandoned planet since he was a toddler. Oh, and he also has nearly unlimited psionic powers.

For The New Fans

All the “creepy kid” pseudo-horror you can handle. Lots of scenes of Charlie stalking people and “making them go away” for “not being nice” and trying to destroy the ship. A Star Trek meets Alien meets Children of the Corn sort of thing.

For The Old Fans

Lots of characters moments and Kirk being his true goofy self as he tries to relate to Charlie. What does it truly mean to be a man?

Mirror, Mirror

Due to a transporter malfunction (it’s always a transporter malfunction, isn’t it?) Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and Uhura find themselves on an EVIL version of the Enterprise.

For The New Fans

In the mirror universe the Enterprise is now a warship designed for blowing s–t up! Evil and non-evil versions of the crew fight each other at every opportunity.

For The Old Fans

Goatee-sporting Spock. We’re really not that hard to please.

Q Who?

This is a Next Generation episode (the first of a few on this list), but you could fairly easily swap Picard and Crew out for Kirk and company. Q is trying to prove, um, something, or maybe he’s just being a dick (the more likely scenario) so he transports the Enterprise 7,000 light years away — right into the path of the Borg.

For The New Fans

The Borg are easily the most mainstream-friendly Star Trek villains ever conceived. They’re zombie Terminators that fly around in a cube-shaped Death Star. If Hollywood can’t sell that to the masses, something’s wrong.

For The Old Fans

Plenty of verbal jousting with Q and hey, we like The Borg too.

The Enterprise Incident

Basically a Star Trek heist movie, Kirk is transformed into a still-looks-just-like-Kirk Romulan via plastic surgery in order to steal a cloaking device. There’s also a honeytrap subplot involving Spock, in which Spock is surprisingly the honeytrapper and not the honeytrapee.

For The New Fans

Oceans 11…in space!

For The Old Fans

After two fairly heavy movies, this would be the crew of the Enterprise at their swaggering, adventuring best. Also, Commander Spock, master of seduction.

The Wounded

The Enterprise is attacked by a Cardassian ship — after managing to subdue them, Picard discovers a rogue Federation ship has attacked a Cardassian science station. The rogue ship is commanded by Captain Benjamin Maxwell, a veteran of past battles with the Cardassians, who believes the “science station” is actually a secret military base. While this episode is about the Cardassians, they could easily be swapped out for the Klingons. Or they could just introduce the Cardassians to the new movie universe because they’re wonderfully evil bastards.

For The New Fans

Space battles a-plenty.

For The Old Fans

Some fairly complex political maneuvering and commentary about the hopelessness of chasing after vengeance for past wounds.

Whom Gods Destroy

The Enterprise visits Elba II, home of the Federation’s home for the criminally insane. Yes, the Federation has an Arkham Asylum. The asylum is now under control of Garth of Izar, a former Captain and hero of Kirk’s, who is now totally bonkers and has shapeshifting abilities.

For The New Fans

Garth of Izar has always been one of Star Trek’s most underappreciated villains in my opinion. He could be as effective a movie villain as Khan if done right (Michael Fassbender would make a great Garth). Also, I’m of the opinion the public has room in their hearts for more sexy green chicks.

For The Old Fans

Plenty of verbal gamesmanship and an examination of the dangers of hero worship.

Chain of Command

Another episode about the Federation getting involved in a little espionage, but this one ends up of going in a much darker direction. Picard, Worf and Dr. Crusher are sent on a covert mission to uncover Cardassian biological weapons. Picard is captured and tortured relentlessly while Riker wrangles with the temporary captain of the Enterprise over how to respond.

For The New Fans

Plenty of action, personality conficts and some truly evil new bad guys.

For The Old Fans

This one is packed with literary references to books like Nineteen Eight-Four and tackles plenty of heavy issues including terrorism, biological weapons and the efficacy of torture. A great example of Star Trek holding a lens up today’s society.

What Are Little Girls Made Of?

Nurse Chapel (remember her?) is reunited with her husband Dr. Roger Korby. Unfortunately Korby has, like so many Trek villains, succumbed to a bit of the ol’ space madness and is now creating androids he plans to use to replace high ranking Federation officials. He, of course, starts with Kirk.

For The New Fans

Conspiracy plots and killer androids!

For The Old Fans

All sorts of heady questions about androids. Can they have a soul? Are human souls little more than computer programs? Basically all the questions that would later be dealt with in more depth with Data are addressed here.

Contagion

A killer computer virus destroys one Federation ship and threatens the Enterprise. The virus is somehow connected to ancient ruins found on a nearby planet. Also, those darn Romulans stick their noses into the situation.

For The New Fans

Dramatic exploding ships and mysterious ancient space ruins that are home to a Stargate-like portal.

For The Old Fans

Lots of mystery, intrigue and some fairly crunchy hard sci-fi involving computer viruses instead of usual subspace anomalies and whatnot. Some smart questions are raised about whether flying around the galaxy in giant spaceships is really all that good an idea given the fallibility of technology.

Errand of Mercy

The Federation and Klingons are on the brink of war! The planet of Organia, populated by simple space hicks lies in the path of the impending conflict. Kirk and Spock beam down to try and bring the Organians around to their side, but the Enterprise is attacked by a Klingon fleet and stranded on the surface.

For The New Fans

High stakes! War is on the horizon and the entire Klingon and Federation fleets are in a standoff! Kirk and Spock waging badass guerrilla warfare!

For The Old Fans

It turns out the Organians are not primitive, but actually highly advanced non-corporeal beings. They were never threatened by the Klingons or Federation — they were merely confused by their childish squabbling. They then disarm both sides and force them to declare peace.

So yeah, this episode is basically the perfect balance of the “high stakes adventure” of the Trek movies and the “quirky aliens and utopian ideals” of the TV show.

Well, those are my 10 picks. Any Star Trek episodes you’d particularly like to see turned into a movie? You can even name Enterprise and Voyager episodes if you want. Go crazy!

I always thought Paramount would eventually reboot the next generation when the current cast doesn’t want to make anymore Star Trek movies. Of course I don’t know how you could make a better Next Gen movie than the 2 part episode “Best of Both Worlds”, but I’d like to see them try.

Ive always thought they would go with CotEoF. What time period would they go back to? We’ve covered Hitler and Zefram Cochran. OOOOH! What if they went back and prevented the destruction of Romulus, and therefore the timeline never changed, and the alternate universe was reset and none of it ever mattered? YES.

Another Episode that would be a great movie. (as a matter of fact a big Sci-fi movie already kind of ripped this story off)

“The Chase” from TNG s06e20. It is mystery story involving several of Star Trek’s heavy hitter races. Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and Humans. The episode is about the startling revelation, that all of the humanoid races of the Star Trek universe were the descendants of one ancient species. and the clues to solve the mystery were encoded in each species DNA.

I always thought the implications of this story, deserved a much bigger showcase.

And, if they stuck close enough to the original, people would finally be able to see that more “orange jumpsuits” died than “red shirts” in the entire series. Seriously. Let’s start making some orange jumpsuit jokes….

Just to step in and defend the movie, here, there is actually some reasonable and thoughtful discussion in the opening act about whether or not we should view war as inevitable, and what the proper reaction to aggression should be. It actually folds rather elegantly into the rest of the movie, too. It felt a lot like classic Trek and was a welcome surprise.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked Star Trek Into Darkness okay — it was a good update to the old Star Trek movie formula, which were usually a lot more action packed. But we can do better! I think the spirit of TV Star Trek can be brought to the big screen fully intact without boring people.

“Where No Man Has Gone Before” would make for a great movie. You get not one, but 2 villains who were former Starfleet.
And, PS, Sherry Jackson from “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” = hottest guest star in TOS history. Find her Playboy spread. You won’t regret it….

I wrestled over whether to include Where No Man Has Gone Before on the list, but for a long time J.J and company tried to convince everybody that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing Gary Mitchell, so it seemed like too obvious a choice seeing as the episode and main villain had already got a lot of recent mainstream attention. So I went with a lesser known “dude with psionic powers threatens the Enterprise” episode with Charlie X.

Also, Yvonne Craig as Marta has a thing or two to say about Sherry Jackson being the hottest Trek guest star. Not to say it isn’t a tight competition though.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Star Trek is just better suited for TV. At it’s best Star Trek is slow burning plots, space politics, and dudes hashing out philosophical quandaries. That doesn’t make for a summer blockbuster.

One of my favorite, and most oft repeated, rants is about how TNG missed a HUGE opportunity in reducing the concept of Data’s daughter (who exceeds his abilities) to only one episode when it should have been explored over an arc or maybe even a whole season. There are SO MANY interesting aspects to it, and yet they chose to ignore it all. Grrrrr!!! So, my choice for a feature film would definitely be “The Offspring”.

Seriously, though… she has the ability to feel emotion? She can learn new skills faster than Data, and has greater comprehension? Not to mention all the fascinating debates about android procreation (which were explored to such a wonderfully lengthy extent regarding Data himself, but raises even more questions when it comes to his creating more entities like himself who are superior to man, and which are apparently able to supercede their creators/parents and what ramifications that could have on other races, especially humans). Plus, watching Data experience the wonders of parenthood, watching your child grow and learn, and not being able to protect them from fear and pain and the travails of learning how to deal with others… especially since Data wasn’t able to experience those emotions himself and could only give her second-hand, objective explanations. THE LIST GOES ON AND ON, what was wrong with the writers??? [/End summary of much more extensive rant]

Most of these still work as porn parodies. I mean Mirror, Mirror pretty much writes itself as a porno (girl accidentally sleeps with the evil twin, etc). And then there’s Q Who, is there any Star Trek race more suited to a bondage flick than the Borg?

The Enemy Within would be a good vehicle for Chris Pine to really mug it up as two Kirks. They get to discuss the qualities necessary for leadership, the balance everyone needs to have between their “good” and “evil” sides… plus, body-double fights. Oh! Also, hilarious space-dog.

One episode from the other Star Treks (Enterprise doesn’t count because it already exists in the movie timeline and nothing good can come from that series):

TNG – “Encounter at Farpoint” – Since the Q are basically gods, they are aware that its a new timeline so they make contact with humans earlier. Also, the problem the Q have with humans is they are “aggressive and adversarial” and this timeline has shown that to be worse than the prime-timeline.

DS9 – “The Maquis” – The Enterprise have to hunt terrorists, but the terrorists are their own fellow citizens. It can have action with a debate on if or when is a evil is justified. You can also add “In the Pale Moonlight” in there and have Kirk make a right, but immoral decision and Spock has to decide whether or not to turn him in.

VOY – “Equinox” – Think “Mirror, Mirror” without the Mirror Universe. Since Section 31 is apparently not clandestine in this timeline, they can have Kirk and crew face off against a Section 31 captain and crew. They can show the differences between the two and it will be entertaining watching the good crew defeat the bad crew without crossing the line.